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It's competing against machines such as the Boxx dual-CPU workstations, which start at $8000 [1]. I can see movie studios and such shelling out the big bucks to
by dllu 7y ago
It's competing against machines such as the Boxx dual-CPU workstations, which start at $8000 [1]. I can see movie studios and such shelling out the big bucks to buy these for their 3D modellers, but only the super rich would buy one for themselves.
[1] https://www.boxx.com/systems/workstations/d-class https://www.boxx.com/systems/workstations/d-class
- opencl 7y agoIt's also competing against machines such as their own iMac Pro whose base model is the $1000 cheaper and has 4x the storage and a faster GPU aside from the built in 5K monitor. That $8000 base model Boxx workstation has 20 cores instead of 8, 50% more RAM, and twice the storage.
- shawnz 7y agoCompeting on what, markup? What advantage does this hardware give for movie studios when consumer grade hardware outperforms it?
- PascLeRasc 7y agoIt runs macOS and those consumer grade computers don't. If the best colorist in the area is working on your film, you give them the tools they ask for.
- MagicPropmaker 7y agoThe color graders here run 10-bit/color HDR monitors that have a wide gamut. Apple doesn't have monitors that support this. (The new one _might_ do the trick; we'll see.) Everyone here doing professional color work is on PCs supplied by Thinkmate. This is standard in Hollywood, too.
- PascLeRasc 7y agoInteresting, thanks for the info! It's probably obvious I don't know anything about filmmaking, audio's my domain.
- boopk 7y agoThe new ones aren't great you need a broadcast monitor that will show how things look for broadcast and not a computer.
- bscphil 7y agoWow, is that really true? Given Apple's popularity among creatives I assumed their top end monitors were HDR10 or better. That's really shocking.
- shawnz 7y agoAs others have noted in this thread, the iMac Pro outspecs this unit at a cheaper price.
- TimTheTinker 7y agoNot for all configurations, and especially not when using 3rd party expansion and customization options.
- pfranz 7y agoTo be clear, I'm not talking about this Mac Pro in particular, but things like the Boxx or Mac Pro. You would get something like this instead of consumer hardware because man hours cost real money. At a previous job they wanted a VR PC, so someone speced out a bunch of high end parts and a case with flashy lights. A couple days of my salary went to putting it all together. That was the first time I had to RMA a motherboard. When I asked they didn't think to confirm the GPU would fit in the case and luckily it did. It also took a couple weeks longer than it should to get up and running because of things like this. Some specialty software is only certified for specific hardware. You can probably deviate, but it's like building a hackintosh. You might not be able to upgrade it and the man hours will likely kill any benefit. I also see a lot of managers forget that artists aren't always tech savvy. Honestly, you don't pay them to be tech support, anyway. You want to pay a known quantity and get improved return. It can be a huge time suck to nickel-and-dime when you're tying to manage large projects. However, using consumer grade hardware has its place.
- buckminster 7y agoThere is a vast middle ground between build it yourself and buy it from Apple.
- ascii_only 7y agoIf you don't have to use MacOS. PC from large OEM will cost half.
- pfranz 7y agoYep and there is a vast middle ground of use-cases. The parent asked about consumer grade hardware versus something like Boxx. I gave 3 separate reasons. A lot of people in this thread are wondering why Hackintoshes aren't an option so I wanted to bring it up. Honestly, Apple wasn't what I had in mind when I was replying. Personally, I've had to deal with HP z-series workstations compared to various cobbled together machines. Having machines where the series will be in production for a decade, data sheets are readily available, fewer tools needed to open it and install stuff saves so much time and allows less downtime and faster turnaround.
- internobody 7y ago3D modelers want NVIDIA cards, not Radeon, as NVIDIA supports CUDA. This has been a longstanding issue with 3D folks; the old trashcan Mac Pro had NVIDIA GPUs even with otherwise-outdated internals. When rumblings came of new Mac Pros a few years ago there was excitement that they could get some fast machines again; alas this appears not to be the case.
- pat2man 7y agoIn theory you can stick any nvidia cards you want into this machine. Don't have to stick with the stock AMD GPUs.
- jakemauer 7y agoUnfortunately for reasons that remain murky Nvidia still hasn’t put drivers out for Mojave and their absence from the keynote leads me to believe they won’t have drivers for Catalina. Nvidia blames Apple saying they’re not approving drivers. So yes you can slap a 2080ti in your Mac Pro but without drivers it’s useless.
- jandrese 7y agoAnybody know what Apple's problem with nVidia is? Are they still feeling burned from the BGE failures several generations back?
- mises 7y agoThis is a professional machine. No one wants to buy it and use hacky work-arounds, they want good drivers. Which aren't an option with nvidia on macos.
- martin_bech 7y agoThe old Mac Pro has AMD FirePro GPUs. Not Nvidia
- tedivm 7y agoDepends on your definition of "old". From 2006 to 2009 they were nvidia, and then in 2010 they switched.